Bin Laden: How Obama team saw drama unfold

The latest developments in military technology allowed Barack Obama to watch the moment America caught up with Osama bin Laden.

Cameras mounted on the helmets of the American Navy Seals provided video footage to the president's command centre in Washington.

Gathered in the secure Situation Room, deep within the White House, Mr Obama and his most trusted aides were able to watch the operation unfold as U.S. special forces stormed the terrorist's compound in Pakistan and relayed images of the raid back via satellite.

A photograph released by U.S. officials captured the drama as the group watched the attack which brought about the culmination of a 13-year manhunt.

As they viewed the images coming in on a 20-minute delay from the remote compound more than 7,000 miles away, Leon Panetta, the CIA director, gave a running commentary from his headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Using the code name Geronimo to describe bin Laden, Mr Panetta calmly explained the images to the president and his inner circle of security and military advisers.

"They've reached the target," he said, as the helicopters touched down at 8.30pm BST.

"We have a visual on Geronimo," Mr Panetta added minutes later.

Then, as shots rang out on the second floor of the compound's main building, Mr Panetta confirmed: "Geronimo EKIA," meaning Enemy Killed In Action.

After a brief silence Mr Obama turned to his colleagues and gave an equally pithy response: "We got him." As cheers and applause erupted in the White House, one of the Seals took a photograph of bin Laden's face and wired it to Washington, where facial recognition software gave a 95 per cent certainty that it was the al-Qaida leader.

The White House said DNA analysis later confirmed that they had their man.

According to one report, bin Laden was also identified by one of his wives, who survived the raid, and a daughter aged 12 or 13.

As it became clear that the president had overseen the entire raid from the White House, new details of the operation began to emerge.

Seal Team Six had been told to start preparing for a raid to capture an unnamed target and carried out two dummy raids on a replica of bin Laden's compound built on a U.S. military base.

Why the target was named after the Apache warrior is unclear, but for weeks the Seals had no idea who they were after.

Several weeks ago, said one U.S. source, "they were told 'We think we found Osama bin Laden, and your job is to kill him'," prompting cheers from the commandos.

In total, 79 Seals were in the raid using four helicopters, two of which were back-up aircraft.

They set off from a U.S. base in Jalalabad, just inside Afghanistan, and crossed the border shortly after 8pm BST on Sunday.

The American special forces scoured the compound for computer hard drives and other valuable intelligence material, recovering what one U.S. official described as "the mother lode of intelligence".

"They cleaned it out," the official added.

"Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive? Hundreds of people are going through it now. It's going to be great even if only 10 per cent is actionable." The Seals left the compound 38 minutes after they had arrived, blowing up one of their helicopters, which the White House said had suffered a mechanical failure, on their way out and using one of the back-up aircraft.

The commandos, who had abseiled from their Black Hawk helicopters into the compound, had sophisticated cameras mounted on their helmets to capture the attack. The images were streamed from the cameras to a unit on board one of the helicopters which remained hovering above the compound.

The images were then beamed to a U.S. government satellite orbiting Earth, before being bounced down to Virginia and Washington.

The technology, which operates in a similar way to the Skype Internet telephone system, was developed for the armed forces in 2008. A highly secure version was purchased by the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), and has been used on a number of top secret raids and missions in Afghanistan.

Initially it had been thought the president had watched the raid live but Mr Panetta later confirmed that there had been a delay on the broadcast, only adding to the tension. He also confirmed that neither he nor the president had seen the exact moment bin Laden was shot dead.

He said: "Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn't know just exactly what was going on.

"There were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information. Finally Admiral [William] McRaven came back and said he had picked up the word Geronimo, which was the code word that represented they got bin Laden."

As they watched the images play out on a bank of monitors, the official photograph, above, released by the White House, showed the intense emotion of the situation.

Dressed in a white polo style T-shirt, casual jacket and beige slacks, the president sat hunched forward, with his gaze fixed on the screen.

To his right was Joe Biden, the vice-president. The devout Roman Catholic was clutching a set of rosary beads. There was a stony expression etched on his face.

To his left, working intently on a laptop computer, was Brigadier Marshall B Brad Webb, the assistant commanding general and one of Mr Obama's most senior military aides.

On the other side of the desk, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, looked visibly shaken, clasping her hand to her mouth.

Mrs Clinton has a file and notebook on her lap, while in front of her an operational document has been pixelated.

The Situation Room, which featured in the hit U.S. series The West Wing, is a secure command centre in the basement of the White House where the president is able to control American forces around the world.

Describing the tension in the room, John Brennan, assistant to president for homeland security, said: "It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time in the lives of the people who were assembled here.